Risky in a legal sense maybe? It seems to me Microsoft has been really trigger shy about pushing forward on integrating all their various services and non-PC products closely with Windows due to their past problems with DOJ/EU. I feel like if they made a big push to integrate things like Zune Pass, Xbox Live integration, Windows Phone, cloud services, Bing search/maps, etc they would have a much more compelling platform. All their competitors are doing it so maybe they now have the cover they need with the DOJ/EU to wrap everything together.

Here's the bit I found most interesting, wherein Steve has a hard time selling the idea that "Windows" is somehow the same whether it's the Windows 7 variant on the HP pad or a WP7 phone. The interviewer wanted to know if the latter was coming to tablets, but Ballmer didn't pick up on that or tried to deflect the implicit fragmentation question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKB8XEXm3Oo#t=2m54s

I thought Scoble's take on this was actually kind of interesting.

http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/22/starbucks-cio-shows-why-nex...

Slightly off-topic, but my ultimate device is something like a smart phone that can dock into different "stations" (think desktop, laptop, tablet) and utilise that stations peripherals (screen, mouse, keyboard, etc).

Ignoring the fantasy hardware, an OS that could handle that would be mind blowing.

No real content here. Perhaps we'll learn more on Thursday at microsoftpdc.com

Off topic: Is Steve Ballmer supposed to be a good speaker? He sounds arrogant to me.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Steve Ballmer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

That's it, I'm sticking with Windows for life.

Wow, this was... unexpected.

He's a party dude at college that everybody knows. Eccentric and likable. Impulsive, yet benign (I don't want to say simple on purpose).

As a foreigner unfamiliar with US fraternity culture, may I ask: How does he differ from George W. Bush in that respect?

I'm not from US either - replace college with school, college. And to answer your question, it doesn't differ, personality-wise.

Ballmer is competent enough to manage a gas station.

He's the party dude that graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a B.A. in mathematics and economics.

Extremely arrogant to me. I didn't knew this face, I would despise having a boss like him.

I dunno. I'm kind of having a flashback to the 2003 Longhorn video. Wasn't that kind of the same message, promising all the risky and exciting things that were in a release mere months away?

Hrmm...people still listen to Balmer? As far as I am concerned, Microsoft would be in the exact same position today (or maybe even better off) if there was no one in top spot.

It has become a well-oiled machine that can just continue churning out Windows & Office versions.

There will be no one to drive new product innovation, granted, but there is no one there right now either.

His argument that Windows is no longer a game changer seems somewhat faulty.

He claims Apple has impact because they decided not to support flash, so he is now moving Starbucks to HTML5.

But if Microsoft decided to not support HTML5, would he still be using HTML5? I personally would still hedge my bets with more people using Windows than Macs.

Microsoft has never released a new version of Windows without referring to it as a "bet-the-company" release. This includes Vista. Just because they say it, doesn't mean it's true -- in fact it's probably never actually been true.

Why Windows 8 we have barely used 7?

   1985:      Windows 1.0
   1987:      Windows 2.0
   1990:      Windows 3.0
  (1992:      Windows 3.1)
   1995:      Windows 95
   1998:      Windows 98
  (2000:      Windows ME)
   2001:      Windows XP
   2006/2007: Windows Vista
   2009:      Windows 7
   2012:      Windows 8

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Windows usually has a three year cicle. Vista stopped this mostly because of the development hell that it was.

My favorite part is where they threw it all out, reset to 2003 codebase, and started from scratch basically, 18ish months before release.[1]

So from a technical standpoint, Vista took longer [5 years] and had less development time [under 2 years] actually make it into the product. (Yes, code they already had they could and did reincorporate into the final product, but still, wow.)

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/10/16/481625.as...

This post is full of snark by the way, but it is useful to know what went wrong with Vista. (TL;DR: Management of very large software development is _hard_)